The King’s Memory
by Jeffrey Greene
His Royal Highness’s faculty of recall is legendary, but it is also a matter of public record. No one who has ever been summoned to the court while the King is conducting affairs of state can doubt that his memory for names, faces, events, the smallest detail of policy, even all past and currents sums, to the penny, of monies in the Treasury, is anything short of astounding.
The name of any subject, even if heard only once, is inscribed in his brain as if on stone tablets, and it is a startling experience to have oneself addressed by name and reminded of the details of whatever matter one had brought before the King, even though decades may have passed since a single fleeting appearance amidst scores of other supplicants jostling for his attention. But as everyone knows, His Majesty wears his gift lightly, never ridiculing or admonishing a subject for failing to remember some exchange of which he can quote verbatim.
Obviously, the King’s memory gives him a tremendous advantage in all matters of court business, foreign policy, relations with family, friends, counsellors, and endears him to his subjects to an unprecedented degree. It also tends to constrain those granted the privilege of frequent audiences with the King, stemming less from his flawless deportment and royal dignity than in the certain knowledge that every word, gesture, even facial expression will be as if recorded by a team of scribes and court painters and, if one hopes to retain any pride at all in some future audience, he must be as artful and succinct in his phrasing as he knows how.
It would be hard to dispute the popular notion that the unshakable authority and respect the King enjoys is based as much on his prodigious memory, which compels a self-protective honesty in all who have even the slightest dealings with him, as it does on his hereditary right to the throne. There are professional flatterers and sycophants in every court, but those few who have dared to lie to the King have found themselves in a most grave position.
Our monarch is progressive and merciful, and many of the ancient punishments — usually a protracted regimen of tortures unto death, for sometimes scandalously trivial infractions — have been moderated or done away with under his reign. But one of the few capital crimes besides treason and murder left on the books is practicing deception in the presence of the King, who has often stated that he hates a lie above all things. There is a saying among us, often posted on tavern walls: “In the Kingdom of Truth, time hangs heavy on the Headsman.”
Publicly, and with his usual modesty, the King calls his memory a gift, though some insist on ascribing it to the Divinity, and others, more circumspect, to the excellent bloodlines of his family, but for which he is simply grateful, since it aids him immeasurably in the rigorous demands of his office. Privately, and only to us, his inner circle, he is more nuanced and measured when speaking of what he calls his “despot memory.”
“Can you even begin to understand what it’s like to have the whole kingdom inside your head?” he asks us, his large, comely hand trembling as it raises the goblet of wine to his lips. “I am not speaking figuratively. At times it seems to me as if every man, woman, child, animal, bird, tree, bush and building, were not merely at my fingertips, but actually contained within the walls of my mind, and that if and when I were to forget even the tiniest detail of my kingdom, that thing would instantly cease to exist.
“The world, unfortunately, is always with me: too complex to understand yet endlessly pouring out its heart to me, as if sheer weight of detail, an infinite accumulation of evidence, would suffice to make me wise. But I’m merely exhausted, and my only wisdom is in knowing what I am: a recording device. It is as if I were one of God’s undersecretaries, given the ability to take down His words in the innumerable languages of nature, but kept in ignorance of their meaning.
“The kingdom has known peace for the many years of my reign, yet during all that time I myself have been under siege, the merciless invaders everything I’ve ever seen, heard, smelled, touched: cries, cackles, tears, death rattles, the clanking of wheels on the cobblestones, the creaks and groans of wood and stone buildings settling under the weight of centuries, the odors of cooking, wine, perfume, leather, dust, rotting leaves, the smell of rain, flowers, soil, sweat, fear, death, blood, decay, the falling of each leaf and branch, multiplying with every moment and taking its permanent place in my brain, pushing even thought aside to make room for more memories.
“If I open a book of poems or stories, I must be quite certain they are worth knowing by heart, because once read, they are mine forever. Music, which I once loved, and which should be a comfort to all men, becomes refined torture after repeating itself note for note in my head for the millionth time. But no, of course you can’t understand. I envy you, gentlemen, your soft, untroubled faces, or rather, I envy your gift of forgetfulness, which you possess to the same degree that I am cursed with remembering.”
What His Majesty says is true, of course. We can’t understand. Who but the possessor of such a memory could know the glory and the torment of it? But there is something equally difficult to live with that we, his loyal subjects, understand, and which apparently, he does not, or at least masterfully pretends that he doesn’t. The King’s memory is failing.
Yes, his great boon, curse, national treasure, has finally proven as mortal as the rest of him, and little by little, he is losing it. This isn’t so surprising, really, considering that His Majesty has entered his ninth decade, but the greater the gift of nature, the more keenly mourned is its loss. The monologue quoted above was recorded about ten years ago, and although his long-term memory is still one of the wonders of the world, his recent recall for names, faces, numbers, the innumerable details of state, has markedly deteriorated.
We all remember the day we noticed the first tiny crack in that towering edifice. An aged and wealthy peasant, Tonio by name, a frequent petitioner at the Royal Court on behalf of the farmers of the northern district, had arrived and made a low, creaking bow, and the King had greeted him with a warm smile. “Ah, our good friend Orsinio has arrived, in his forty-seventh appearance before us, to offer his district’s annual tribute of a tenth part of the beet harvest. Let us bid him welcome, and offer our thanks for his generosity.”
Not only had His Majesty mistaken his old and very familiar subject’s name, he’d gotten the crop wrong, too, for it is corn, not beets, that predominates in that district. As to the number of Tonio’s appearances at court, no one could be sure. The poor, frightened man, to his credit, betrayed but a moment’s confusion before bowing low once again and genuflecting his way out the door.
At that moment, almost instinctively, a conspiracy was born, at first involving only the King’s inner circle, his closest advisers, the Queen, and their adult children, including his son, the Crown Prince. But as the rumor slowly spread in widening circles to the farthest reaches of the kingdom, so did the conspiracy. Spies were sent among the people, and anyone heard repeating the rumor was sworn to silence, on pain of death.
There remained some, of course, who simply would not believe that so divine a gift as the King’s memory could ever be taken away, certainly not by a loving God, and this incredulity was officially encouraged. The King’s authority has for so many years rested as much on his reputation for infallibility in all matters of state as it has for his fairness, wisdom and love of truth. And because it was his well-founded confidence in his own powers that made obeying him almost a natural impulse, we in the leadership understood from the beginning that the peace and stability of our country could be maintained only by perpetrating the grandest deception ever attempted by a loyal people: keeping the secret of the King’s condition from himself.
Try to imagine the difficulties of carrying out such a scheme. One will recall that lying, or suborning a lie, in the presence of the King is a capital offense. This makes every petitioner, counsellor, emissary and sycophant who nods, bows and agrees with His Majesty instead of correcting him nothing less than a criminal as he confidently calls him by the wrong name and asks after a family he doesn’t have, or states a figure concerning the Royal budget that is years out of date, or tells a story from his glorious past that we’ve heard him tell the day before yet applaud with the fervor of a first hearing.
That we do this out of love and respect instead of contempt and ambition hardly mitigates the sick feeling all of us now share that the conspiracy cannot last much longer, that the King’s faltering powers will begin to erode the confidence he enjoys among his subjects, and that he will soon be perceived as a doddering, confused old man no longer fit to rule.
There have been secret meetings with the Crown Prince concerning the possibility of approaching His Majesty with the gentle suggestion that an early succession would be in everyone’s best interest, but even the Queen shrinks from bringing up the subject in his presence. However artfully she might frame it, she has told us, to even mention the word “abdication” for a beloved monarch who still believes himself worthy of his office is taboo. Only the King can speak it, either at the point of a conqueror’s sword or if he decides that he is no longer able to fulfill the duties of his office.
Naturally, it has occurred to us that the King already knows what is happening to him, but keeps silent for the common good, and being the proud monarch he is, he collaborates in the deception, pretending not to notice when his subjects fail to correct his mistakes. The problem with this theory is, it can’t be confirmed, since no one, not even his wife and children, dares to test it, and so we must go on with this burdensome masquerade.
By now virtually every subject in the kingdom knows of His Majesty’s affliction, and all share common cause in protecting his dignity, but we all live in dread of the day that someone — an ambassador from a neighboring principality, an innocent child, a subject who suffers from the same malady and forgets himself long enough to correct the King — unwittingly destroys our fragile, precious stability.
Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey Greene
